Extract

In general, the relationship between the city and international borders is not immediately obvious given that the former often refers to centrality and attractiveness while the latter to separation and differentiation. Identifying what is a city is becoming increasingly difficult in a globalized world characterized by strong urban growth; however, the classic definition of a grouping of a large number of people engaged in various activities within a small space, remains valid today. The city is primarily a spatial and social object with a political dimension, whose density and diversity of population and activities are powerful markers. This seemingly coherent picture is, however, crossed by social borders ←213 | 214→which reveal a heterogeneous space characterized by inequalities and even tensions between the populations which live there. In this sense, all the agglomerations of the world are thus marked by unstable internal borders which divide and structure their spaces.

Cross-border conurbations constitute a singular category of urban spaces: they are groups which have morphological and/or functional continuity despite the presence of one or more international borders. Identifying their specificities requires returning to the territorial construction of the state and the relations that exist between it and cities as a political object. According to Max Weber, European cities are distinguished from cities in other regions of the world from the Middle Ages by their autonomy from territorial powers. From the 13th century onwards, the construction of states was characterized by a slow, irregular, but progressive subjugation...